Piedmont Natural Gas Co (Piedmont Natural Gas Co) Risk Assessment

Piedmont Natural Gas Co Inc was incorporated in New York in 1950 and began operations in 1951. In 1994, it merged into a newly formed North Carolina corporation with the same name for the purpose of changing its state of incorporation to North Carolina. The Company is an energy services company whose business is distribution of natural gas to residential, commercial, industrial and power generation clients in portions of North Carolina, South Carolina and Tennessee, including customers served by municipalities who are its wholesale customers. The Company is invested in joint venture, energy-related businesses, including unregulated retail natural gas marketing, regulated interstate natural gas transportation and storage and regulated intrastate natural gas transportation. It provides service from resource centers in Anderson, Greenville and Spartanburg in South Carolina and Charlotte, Salisbury, Greensboro, Winston-Salem, High Point, Burlington, Hickory, Indian Trail, Spruce Pine, Reidsville, Fayetteville, New Bern, Wilmington, Tarboro, Elizabeth City, Rockingham and Goldsboro in North Carolina. In North Carolina, it also provides natural gas service to Greenville, Rocky Mount and Wilson. In Tennessee, its service area is the metropolitan area of Nashville, including wholesale natural gas service to Gallatin and Smyrna. The Company has three reportable business segments, regulated utility, regulated non-utility activities and unregulated non-utility activities. The regulated utility segment includes operating a safe and reliable natural gas distribution system and the ability to recover the costs and expenses of the business in the rates charged to customers. The regulated non-utility activities segment consists of equity method investments in regulated energy-related joint ventures that are held by the Company's wholly-owned subsidiaries. The unregulated non-utility activities segment consists of its equity method investment in an unregulated energy-related joint venture that is held by a wholly-owned subsidiary. The regulated utility competes with other energy products, such as electricity and propane, in the residential and commercial customer markets. Natural gas for power generation competes with other fuel sources for the generation of electricity, including coal, nuclear and renewable resources. Additionally, as with industrial customers, the Company competes with other pipeline providers to serve the power generation plants.